


Somnus

by greenkangaroo



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, Insomnia, M/M, Trouble Sleeping, chouji is an expert in getting geniuses to rest, he is not sure this is how he wants to use his expertise, he'd rather live to see his next birthday thanks, sasuke is bad with this whole rest thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-07
Updated: 2016-09-07
Packaged: 2018-08-13 19:06:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7982863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenkangaroo/pseuds/greenkangaroo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of the final battle of the Fourth Ninja World War, Sasuke is having trouble sleeping. Naruto has an idea. Chouji would prefer Naruto stop having ideas immediately.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic takes place en medias res, AKA 'in the middle of the action', and insinuates that after their fight at the Valley of the End and the subsequent releasing of the Infinite Tsukyomi the cast remained at the site for a while as the ninja armies packed up. I confess to not knowing if that is strictly canon but it works for my purposes here.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Naruto has his idea and Chouji is Not Convinced.

"Look, he's just having trouble sleeping, that's all." Naruto is doing his best baby fox impression, and maybe it would work on someone whose sense of self-preservation isn't as honed as Chouji Akimichi's, but in that, Naruto is shit out of luck. Chouji's the guy who gets hit first. Chouji got hit first for nearly _four years_ , and was then expected to get back up and keep getting hit. His self preservation is sharp as a chakra scalpel, thank you very fucking much. 

"Naruto," Chouji tries to be reasonable because really what else can you be to one of your closest friends, "This is not a case of convincing. I am saying no." 

"Hn." Shikamaru says, and Chouji rounds on him. "Oh? Oh you want in on this conversation? Whose idea was this again?" 

"All I said," Shikamaru says, slowly and carefully, "was that I slept better when I was with you." A pause. "That everyone sleeps better with you." 

"Well then keep your stupid mouth SHUT, Shikamaru!" Chouji does not talk back to the single most important person in his life often, but when he does, he makes damn sure he is in the right. 

He is definitely in the right. 

Because there is no way, after surviving a world war, Chouji is going to let Sasuke Uchiha sleep within twenty feet of his personage, chronic insomnia be damned. 

"But we've tried everything else." Naruto is drooping. "Sakura can't ease him, and none of Gaara's ideas have worked either." 

"You know we have more medics than just Sakura?" Chouji asks, a little too patiently. "You know they're holding seminars about insomnia?" 

They're holding seminars about a whole lot of things, now.

"Chouji, please." Naruto is begging now. "Please just try." 

Chouji would tell Naruto to go piss up a rope, he would, but there's this little niggling at the back of his head that reminds him that this is the guy that saved the world, lost an arm doing it, and is probably going to become Hokage in the next ten years. 

If Chouji carries this thought through to its logical conclusion, as the next heir of one of the four Pillar Houses of Konoha he has an obligation to help Naruto. Within reason. 

Chouji pinches the bridge of his nose. 

Shikamaru elbows Naruto. 

"If he kills me," Chouji says, looking directly at Shikamaru, "you are explaining to my father why he has to make Makaro clan heir." A pause. "And you're telling Ino I got to sleep with Sasuke before her. Give no context." 

Shikamaru's nod is grave. 

Naruto cheers and then halfway through this cheer protests that Sasuke won't be killing anyone anytime soon, and Chouji throws up his hands and stalks away. 

When Shikamaru falls in line with him he says, "Is it really that bad?" 

Shikamaru leans on Chouji's shoulder, sighs heavily enough that he sags, and that is all the answer Chouji needs.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which the first go...doesn't.

Sasuke looks about as thrilled with this as Chouji does, and he takes a vicious sort of pleasure in that. 

The cleanup of the Allied Shinobi Forces is a slow job. Sorting out the dead, healing the wounded, arranging transport- all of the logistics are enough to make Chouji's head spin and he doesn't even deal with them. He's been lifting, mostly- debris and bodies. It's what he's good for. 

Chouji can almost hear Asuma chiding him as Sasuke stands by the tent flap, looking for all the world like a bewildered bird that had somehow managed to hop inside. 

_Kindness, Chouji, where is your kindness?_

I left it packed in mothballs at home, thank you very much, Chouji says sourly to the ghost of his teacher. Where it belongs. I nearly got killed because of this asshole. 

There's so much more, though, than that. There's all the tears Ino ever cried and all the dead looks Naruto has ever given. There's Sai trying so hard to fit into a niche that isn't Sai-shaped and Kakashi becoming even more closed off than he was before. There's Orochimaru and there's Sakura and-

and- 

God _damn_ Asuma Sarutobi for being right. 

Because all of these things are true but there is something else, too. There is Sasuke, as he was, as he is, and as he might be. 

Chouji Akimichi does not hate Sasuke Uchiha. 

He pities him. 

He's not sure if that's better or worse. 

Chouji half-considers asking Sasuke what Naruto threatened him with to get him to the tent, but 'threats', 'Naruto'- these are not words he wants to be throwing around in front of a ninja who has two chakra-charged magic murder eyes and is just as deadly with one arm as he was with two. 

Instead he pats the sleeping pad next to his. 

Sasuke eyes it, and then him. 

Chouji shrugs. "Standing up doesn't help." He says. 

"You're afraid of me." Sasuke says.

"Anyone with half a brain is afraid of you." Chouji retorts because kind or not he is running out of patience. "Now do you want to sleep or not?" 

"I don't see how being near you will help." Sasuke sounds earnestly confused. 

Chouji decides to try a different tactic. He borrows the Nara Eyebrow. 

Sasuke does it right back- Uchiha Eyebrow, though. More of a curve, less of an angle. 

"Look," Chouji says, "we can stand here all night if you want but Shikamaru is going to be pissed if you don't even bother stealing his spot." He pats the sleeping pad again. 

Again Sasuke doesn't move. Chouji isn't sure what it is that's stopping him (aside from everything?) but he decides on another tried and true tactic: something absolutely ridiculous. 

"You're not worried about me attacking you, are you?" 

He is beyond surprised when he sees Sasuke's eyes minutely flick over him. 

"There are no weapons in here," he reminds Sasuke, because it had been a stipulation the Uchiha had asked for. 

"You don't need weapons." Sasuke says, and for a moment Chouji is at a loss because it's been so long since anyone he went to school with has viewed him as a genuine threat that he doesn't have a contingency plan for this. 

Oh, right. War. Death. Destruction. Crushing people with his literal bare hands. 

"As if you couldn't stop me," he says, and he's not proud of it but Chouji has been best friends with a genius for a long time, he is used to being the normal guy in the room. Normal being a relative measure when you can grow to the size of a mountain. 

Sasuke considers this. 

"Besides," Chouji adds, because he did promise Naruto and it's getting late, "it's bad manners to kill a guest in their sleep. Now will you get over here?" 

Sasuke does not comply. 

They spend the night staring at one another.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> second verse, same as the first.

The second night, Chouji decides to try something new. He moves Sasuke's sleeping pad to the other side of the tent and builds a little wall out of what gear he keeps around.

Sasuke doesn't call it childish because he probably never built a wall as a child, at least not the fun kind. Still he does give it a long, considering look. 

He sits on the protected sleeping pad which Chouji counts as a small victory. He's used to taking them when he can get them. 

Sasuke's back remains ramrod-straight and Chouji asks, "Doesn't that hurt?" 

Sasuke shrugs. 

"You never were much of a talker." Chouji mutters, and is surprised to hear Sasuke respond, "Neither were you." 

"How would you remember that?" Chouji asks and he can see Sasuke thinking about answering. 

"We spent time together when we were young." Sasuke says. "Didn't we?" 

And Sasuke has just crossed into the Forbidden Zone, the Things of Which We Do Not Speak. 

"We did." Chouji replies, because it's true. One or two afternoons, their mothers making tea while their fathers discussed clan affairs. They didn't know what to do with one another, then- one too focused on overcoming his brother, the other too shy and growing painfully aware of the body he would carry. 

"Your mother made rice balls and you ate them all." Sasuke says and Chouji can't stop the snort. "Of course I did." He says. "And I would again." 

"I'm sorry." Sasuke says. "I said something wrong." 

Chouji quirks his lips in a smirk and says "You and everyone else who has and will ever meet me. You're not special, Uchiha." 

That makes Sasuke smile and Chouji remembers that smile. 

"Will you try to sleep?" He asks. 

Sasuke lies down obediently but Chouji knows that he remains awake.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which we get a miracle

"Why are we doing this?" Sasuke asks Chouji when he comes in on night number five. 

"We're both trying to help Naruto," Chouji says. 

"I am getting strange looks." Sasuke says. 

"You're coming to my tent every night if I was a ninja out there I'd be giving you weird looks too." Chouji says. "You should hear the rumors, there are some good ones." 

"Good ones?" 

"My personal favorite is that you've bewitched me away from Shikamaru." 

Sasuke stares and if indignant shock looks funny on a regular ninja it's three times as funny on a rinnegan/sharingan combo. 

"Ino's fit to be tied." Chouji adds, just to see the magic murder eyes widen a little more. "She never quite gave up her crush on you." 

"I never understood that." Sasuke mutters as he sits on his pad on the other side of the wall. 

Chouji understands it perfectly, but he's not going to tell Sasuke that. Ino is his second-oldest friend and team mate, he's not going to hand her soft underbelly over to the single biggest elephant in the collective ninja room. 

"Do you dream?" Chouji asks. 

Sasuke shakes his head. 

"Would you like to?" Chouji asks cautiously. 

Sasuke sits up and looks at him and the temperature in the tent drops by three degrees. Chouji holds both big hands up, showing that they are empty and still proportionate to his body. 

"What are you suggesting?" Sasuke asks as his chakra finally calms. 

"I can make you sleep." Chouji says. 

"So everyone tells me." 

"No. I mean really make you sleep. It's a jutsu." 

The Uchiha Eyebrow makes a full appearance. 

"You have a sleep jutsu you think will work on me?" 

"Let me put it to you this way." Chouji says, ignoring the little voice telling him that clan secrets are clan secrets damn it, "The First Head of the Akimichi Clan developed it because the First Head of the Nara Clan was an insomniac." 

That's not the whole story, not really, but the whole story would require a recanting of sixteen generations of exasperated Akimichis calming brittle Nara geniuses and temperamental Yamanaka spies and they just don't have that kind of time. 

"It does," Chouji continues, because Sasuke hasn't made a move towards him yet so perhaps he's on safe ground, "mean I need to cast a jutsu on you." 

"What guarantee do you have it will work with my eyes?" Sasuke asks. 

"I don't," Chouji says, "but you've been awake for a long time and even Gaara is getting concerned." 

A lot of people are getting concerned, and Chouji has warned them all that he can't work miracles. 

"Fine." Sasuke says, and here is Chouji's miracle.

"Fine?" Chouji parrots. 

"Fine. Let's try it." Sasuke leans back and closes his eyes. "What the hell. Can't anymore than not work." 

He's not wrong and Chouji runs through the hand signs like second nature. They are second nature, now- used since childhood to lull Shikamaru, to lull Ino, and since the war's end to lull shocked and exhausted soldiers who keep hearing phantom kunai and the hiss of ghostly demolition tags. 

The small blue butterfly that appears on his fingertips flits its way across the tent. It casts a gentle glow on the wall of gear, on the sleeping pad, and on Sasuke before landing delicately on the Uchiha heir's forehead. 

It would make a perfect picture if Chouji thought for a moment taking one would be appropriate. 

Sasuke inhales. He exhales. And he falls.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which Sasuke dreams

The hallway of the house is endless and he's running down it at full tilt. There's something terrible at the end and he doesn't want to see it but he has to see it and he keeps running and running and not getting anywhere. 

He grabs at the wall but the wall has scales and they are white as bone. The hallway is a snake and the floor is its teeth and he tries to summon fire but it lunges too quickly. He lashes out, screaming- 

and someone takes his hand. 

"Enough." 

He opens his eyes. It's a little boy, his age. His spirals are newly inked, his hair is a wild nest, and he's a little butterball in green. 

"You don't want to be here." The boy says, looking down the hallway that isn't a snake anymore. "Going won't change it." 

"Yes it will." He says. 

"No," the boy says gently, "it won't." He pulls. "Come with me." 

He goes and they are walking in a forest. It is peaceful and green. There are deer grazing but they don't seem to notice the children. 

"Where do you feel safest?" The other little boy asks. 

He shakes his head. 

The boy smiles and it's not a happy smile. "I thought so." He said. "Come on, then. Let's go." 

He leads his companion through the forest, through the town where people without faces go about their business. The boys climb up a grassy hill. There is another boy there, with black hair pulled back from his face. 

"Hey, Chouji." He says. 

"Hey, Shikamaru. Move over." 

Shikamaru does and Sasuke says, "This is a dream." 

"Yeah." Chouji said, patting the grass beside him. Sasuke sits. 

They watch the clouds. sometimes they turn crimson. Sometimes they are pinwheels or fans. Sometimes they are foxes. 

"You know we went after you." Chouji says to Sasuke. "Me, Kiba, Neji, Shikamaru. Naruto." 

"I didn't want you to." Sasuke replies. 

"Why did you think you had to do it alone?" Chouji asks and Sasuke tries to think of an answer. 

"I was always alone." He says at last. Someone walks by the bottom of the hill- a blonde boy, followed by a pink haired girl. He is yelling, she is laughing. A tall man with silver hair ambles along behind them, nose stuck in a book. 

"I'm not alone now." Sasuke says. 

"No." Chouji says. Something moves through the grass. It is a snake, white and hissing. Chouji leans forward, grabs it behind its head. He shakes once and flings the dead creature away. 

"Is this what you do?" Sasuke asks. "Chase bad dreams away?" 

"That's why you weren't sleeping." Chouji says. "Too many bad dreams."

"You didn't answer my question." 

"You know geniuses are a lot alike." Chouji says. "Moving too fast to see when they're falling apart. I can't stop your dreams. I can just shove them a little." 

Someone ascends the hill. Sasuke watches him and Chouji watches Sasuke. 

"He's dead." Chouji gently reminds Sasuke as Itachi comes up to them. His mouth is moving but they cannot hear what he is saying. He is smiling. 

"He shouldn't be." 

"None of them should be," Chouji says, and the way he says it gives Sasuke a moment of pause. 

"You knew." He says. 

Chouji shakes his head as Itachi ruffles Sasuke's hair and disappears into a burst of crow feathers. "Not then. I suspected, when I got older. I know my father did. He had great respect for your father, Sasuke." 

Chouji looks up at the clouds. 

"It could have been us." He says. "The heir and the spare." For a moment a scene plays out in front of them- Sasuke chasing Chouji, Chouji complaining that Sasuke is too fast. Sitting on the back porch of the Akimichi Compound, watching the butterflies and eating rice balls from a plate between them. 

The scene breaks apart. "We had nothing in common." Sasuke says. 

"We still don't." Chouji replies. "but commonalities are not what make friends." 

Shikamaru raises a fist and Chouji bumps it. 

"You can't jutsu me to sleep every night." Sasuke says. The hill is gone, and so is Shikamaru. They are sitting together on the Hokage monument, looking out over Konoha. 

"No, I can't." Chouji agrees. Behind them there is a locked door. 

"If I open that," Sasuke says after glancing over his shoulder, "all hell is going to break loose, isn't it?" 

Chouji nods. 

"Will I wake up?" 

Chouji shakes his head. 

"You're gonna keep me asleep." Sasuke realizes. "Make me fight my way through it." 

"It's the only way." Chouji says. "I'm sorry, Sasuke." 

"You were waiting for me to trust you enough to cast the jutsu." Sasuke's smile is bitter. "You're a devious person, Chouji." 

"Don't tell anyone." Chouji says. "It will ruin my reputation." 

Sasuke stands and Chouji stands too. They aren't children anymore. They are grown, and their clothes show the signs of a fight barely won. 

"Your'e gonna need this." Chouji says, and he hands Sasuke a sword. 

"Will you be there when I wake up?" Sasuke asks, and Chouji nods. "I'll even have rice balls." He says. "Maybe I'll share some. Sasuke?" 

Sasuke looks at him. 

"I believe in you." Chouji says, and Sasuke opens the door.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which Sasuke wakes up.

Sasuke sleeps for fourteen hours and keeping him asleep is a struggle. Chouji knows people come into the tent and knows people go out. He can feel the moment Shikamaru sits in the tent's shadow, knows Ino is guarding the front. 

When Sasuke relaxes completely, Chouji lets the jutsu go and meekly puts in a request for rice balls only to be told Ino is not a waitress and this is a war camp not a restaurant. Shikamaru brings back exactly what he asks for. 

Sasuke wakes up to Chouji sitting beside him, a plate between them. 

"Good morning." He says, and he smiles. 

Sasuke smiles back. 

\---

Every so often, when staring into the fire doesn't do the trick and pills are not an option, Sasuke will wait for a butterfly. 

It doesn't always find him and that's fine; Chouji is a Jounin now, far away and defending their village with a limited supply of chakra and an even more limited sensory range. 

Sometimes the butterfly does find him, hovering over his head until he gives up and lies down. 

Sasuke lets his eyes close and he dreams of fights old and new, mistakes made and mended, and a plate of rice balls on a back porch.


End file.
